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I posted images of the banning notices and wrote about pages 4 and 10 of the Israel and Palestine thread being censored there : not everything but a few pages have been censored for reasons which are sometimes just inexplicable - key words in some instances e.g. I discussed anti-semitism in terms of how " Y-d" is a perfectly normal word which in its proper pronunciation is correct but in its clipped improper pronunciation is racist i.e. in the pronunciation which mocks, insinuates, contempts etc ... Think how the word " woman " can be used in the same way or how " N-g-o " originally just meant " black " and was given negative associations and replaced in polite conversation with " coloured " and those spiteful associations were then transferred to that and so we ended up using " black " and the same is happening again etc ... This I deem to be a legitimate discussion but this stupid squeemishness about even speaking / writing these words leads into such pages being censored : how the hell are we to confront racism, sexism and anti-semitism etc if we can not discuss these things like adults ?

This goes right to the heart of Post-Modernist Republican debates about the use of language and the expropriation of and casual destruction of the cultural capital of our society by communities of private interest : in a sense it is what has happened to Republicanism in Wales because The Democrats in Wales love to rhetoricise about such things as " The Rule of Law " and " Human Rights " but they rip them from their cultural context in Republicanism and thus reduce them to meaningless shibboleths. The Democrats in Wales' idea of " The Rule of Law " is " Do as we say - we control The State " whereas the actual idea of The Rule of Law is that it is supposed to set limits upon those who control The State being able to act in an arbitrary way and therefore its purpose is to have them do as we say : the reason why The United Kingdom as a political system is so out of step with all of the other modern political systems is because it is still structured as a feudal state and as such is inverted - it is a " Demockery " not a Democracy and therefore effectively an elective dictatorship ...

... Arguably historically the nearest comparison that can be made is Franco's Spain where there was a certain kind of tolerance for those who did not actively oppose the regime and every institution was required to profess that they endorsed it e.g. the trade unions in Wales are not only expected to endorse the political system which is destroying them but also to support The Labour & Cooperative Party in its efforts to serve this regime. Scribbling away like this is de facto fairly ineffectual but if you doubt that what I am saying is true then consider what a real political system looks like : it is a decision making process in which the participants want to make the best decisions possible hence they are interested in gathering facts and hearing arguments about those facts. The United Kingdom is a non-political system constructed to exclude facts and to suppress arguments : The Public Discourse in Wales was always restricted but now it has become constricted to the point where there are barely any facts allowed into it because of the danger which they present in exposing the fact that there are barely any arguments.

The Democrats in Wales are not interested in either facts or arguments but only in votes and elections : once elected the The United Kingdom licences them to do as they please because by " The Rule of Law " they mean an arbitrary legalism in which they can make any law which they please and declare anybody who opposes it to be a criminal because we have neither a Constitution nor a Supreme Court which can enforce it. We do have a piece of paper with " Human Rights " written upon it but I invite you to watch what Theresa May will do after " Brexit " - you will see that it is nothing more than a piece of paper : real Human Rights are part of The Constitution and in a republic they are not temporary privileges that the wealthy hand out as a bonus but the inalienable legal property of " We The People." Of course The Aristocracy in The USA have made deep inroads into all aspects of the Constitution by recruiting willing volunteers to conduct their war against " We The People " - The Democrats ( by which I mean - in adapting this American political argument for us to use in Wales - all those who substitute votes and elections for facts and arguments : who in their unprincipled quests for power over The State use Lies and Hatred to divide The People in Wales against each other in non-political systems shaped by those they serve - The Aristocrats in Wales ... of which there are now so precious few left because even those who left to live in London have now removed themselves to tax havens.)

This is all obvious to any observer : there are many observers of it who are using different ways of describing what is happening - but not only are these observers' commentaries not being heard in The Public Discourse in Wales the fact is that by looking across the World Wide Web where such descriptions are being discussed there are various methods it seems of keeping them out of The Public Discourse. I am not just talking about my own little effort to distill the basic tenets of Republicanism out again to provide The Rule of Thumb of The Open Hand and The Right Hand Path of Dexterous Politics of Truth, Love, Freedom, Peace and Life. It is not just direct censorship but campaigns of disinformation to obscure and deny facts and then to manufacture plausible counter-arguments to deceive those then deprived of facts by which to evaluate these debates - and important things like climate change and the re-establishment of slavery which should be in The Public Discourse are being replaced in the media by The Hierocrats hired by The Aristocrats - not by The Democrats, who are also in the pay of The Aristocrats - with " news " about the latest episodes of popular television programmes or the sports results of fifty years ago ... What I dread is that The Aristocrats will now enter into a fierce competition with each other and Monocracies will arise : there is talk of war - have The Hierocrats found a new revenue source ?

So it's not the whole site. While racking my brains to think what it could be, it did cross my mind that something you'd said under 'Israel and Palestine might have offended somebody's sensibilities. But it didn't occur to me that it was just a few words.

'Negro' is just Spanish for black and maybe in other languages too. Montenegro means black mountains I imagine. It wouldn't have been considered racist until a few decades ago. Martin Luther King used it.

It just has negative connotations becasue of the general ambience of the time in which it was uped. Until recently, I would never have used it except in the context of 'Negro Spiritual', and now I wouldn't even say that. It sounds so old fashioned for a start.

I hardly think it's worthy of being banned though.As for the offensive word that rhymes with tigger, would you believe that we were taught a counting out rhyme which contains it when I started school aged four in about 1971? Of course, this was when 'Love thy Neighbour' was about to debut on TV.

Unlike the programme, I don't think they rhyme did me any harm as I didn't know what the word meant. Emily Parr who was kicked off a series of Big Brother for using the term , was not a nice person and she did upset the person she used it to.

But her argument was that there is a youth subculture where it can be used in a good humoured way and is not considered offensive. If true she should have been allowed to adduce evidence, but no one listened. You have to be careful how you use it. There are very few contexts where it would be a good idea.

The Y word is a back formation from Yiddish. Somebody would remember that on his way to grammar shcool he would try to avoid emissaries from the synagogue. It was a time when merely being late for school was an offence for which you would be humiliated and painfully punished.

But someone would come up and ask hopefully in Yiddish, ''Bist du Yid?'' They wanted boys over 13 to nip into the synagogue to make up a minyan to witness a wedding or whatever. The Y word is not offensive in the context it is used here.

I was afraid it was something I'd said that caused the problem. If that had been the case, I'd say you can modify it however you like.

Last edited by marianneh on Sun Feb 18, 2018 10:02 pm; edited 2 times in total

I think that the main problem arising from Y Repwblic being plastered with such notices is that it they are in essence libelous : those reading them have their imaginations let loose - what did we say ? - and the appearance of this condemnation being pronounced by an " authority " ( instead of a machine ) leads to the assumption that it must be true - that The Cardiff Illuminati etc are inherently intolerant whereas of course anybody who knows us would be of the opposite opinion : we are inherently tolerant to the point that we are willing to hear the opinions of some of the most intolerant people - and argue with them e.g. you publicly calling out Balchder Cymru for having their Neo-Nazi fellow travellers ... The whole point of the Republican way of doing things is that people can express themselves and disclose their opinions without fear of being discriminated against - except that they will be argued against : it is the opposite way of doing things to Democracy in which people keep their unpopular opinions secret and retreat into sectarian groups which share those opinions in private but publicly assert popular opinions in order to get themselves elected i.e. so that having obtained power they do not have to listen to anybody else's opinions ... in other words Democrats are not willing to consider whether they are wrong and therefore will never admit a mistake still less listen to criticism and correct their behaviour - and they never apologise other than " officially " for something which happened a hundred years ago from which they can dissociate themselves : The Democrats not only seek absolute power but exercise it with absolute incompetence whilst demanding absolute irresponsibility ... now argue against that Marianne !!!